I have a '95 GT Zaskar with a yellow Judy XC fork (stock equipment for the bike). I guess as you'd expect, the elastomers are going bad...maybe OK for my weight, I dunno....they felt week to the fella I bought the bike from, but he'd ridden it since new and I don't have a new one to compare to.

2 questions:

1. If I were to want to repair the Judy, is there still a source for elastomers? (I would guess folks here would say ditch the old technology...but I wouldn't mind getting the fork in good shape even if I do get a replacement....something cool about having all the original stuff with the bike, I guess.)

2. For a bike like that, what would be a good/comparable (weight/performance/?) new or reasonably new fork to look for as a replacement? (I know very little about suspension forks....always been on 'rigid' bikes...old MTBs or road bikes...so this is new & interesting stuff for me to learn about!)

the rock shox dart has replaced the judy, and its priced so cheep its prolly easier to just do that then bother to repair the old judy (unless you know how to do it cause fork overhaul labor gets expensive even for simple jobs) if you can get the parts you could try the labor yourself judys are pretty basic so it should be among the easier forks to fix.

if you want to upgrade you could spend the money for a rock shox recon, one of the marz forks but i'm guessing that since its a 95 you don't wanna dump money into it (although the zaskar is one of those sought after old bikes)

wow - quick find. is there a good faq or something someone could point me to about how to convert the shock? My guess is I'll do both in some form or fashion. Since the rest of the bike is great (well, I guess Deore is nuclear bomb proof), I thought it would be cool to have the shock in original form as long as it wasn't something that was universally disliked when new & I wouldn't want it anyway.....is that the case with the elastomers?

I don't know of a FAQ or anything about replacing with the spring kits.

FWIW, they look pretty straightforward - should bolt right in. Those are pretty ancient forks, come apart easily, without a whole lot of bushings, little snap rings or anything that requires extra special tools.

I had a pair of Manitou 2's or 3's when they were first released and was always splitting/breaking the bushings.. but, I was also experimenting a lot by trying to stack more elastomers inside and other things to get more travel. I would have loved to have a spring kit in them at the time (Now I'm happy with my Super T's!). In fact, if I ever get around to finding and building an old Manitou frame, I'm going to try the spring kit.

I cannot vouch for the product or the vendor - but at a glance these look like a good idea if you plan on using that fork more than once or twice a season. Or course, I'd ask the seller lots of questions about installation and all that beforehand. Hoe that helps!

Anyone here tried one of the setups in the Ebay link? What I don't really know (sort of caveman-esque becoming re-interested in real MTBing after years of riding in urban settings) is how the technology of that retrofit kit compares performance-wise to a modern fork technology. Basically, I'll be doing riding no more intense (and to be honest, probably less in most cases) than would have been expected when my Zaskar was new in '95....so, is this $95 retro-fit kit something that would render the Judy reasonably as "good" as spending about the same on a good, more modern used fork off Ebay or a friend who's upgrading? I'm not looking for 2009 level performance out of the bike...I realize it is what it is, but I'd like to have it in the best "90's" shape it can be in.